For a long time, I used an English-sounding pen name – George M. Stone – which was convenient, because it was easy to change my name, but I just dropped the “castle” from it. I also thought about the Spanish-sounding Jorge Castillo de Piedra, but eventually dropped that because I found it too long. George M. Stone is short, simple, easy to pronounce and remember, and even has something to do with my real name.
But in the end, on the advice of a friend, I decided to go with my real name, because as he wrote:
Own name, nice name, be proud of it.
At that time I had not yet invented a title for the novel, so for a while it was called “science fiction story”. I can’t remember when Star Siblings popped into my head, but I suspect it was early in the writing process. I wanted to use ‘star’ anyway (see also my favourites: Star Wars, Star Trek), and Siblings came from the fact that the main characters are – spoiler alert – siblings.
I thought for a while about an English title, but they don’t exactly express what I wanted to imply with the English title and they don’t sound very good euther. Again, I hadn’t planned it that way, but during the editing process, again on the advice of a friend, I gave the novel a subtitle – The Orphans of Castor – so that it might be more eye-catching, and of course, you can get some idea of what it’s about.
Anyone who, like me, is familiar with film will recognise some of the inspiring scenes from, for example, Independence Day, Boomerang or The Fifth Element. Although the most obvious ‘borrowing’ for many might be the brother and sister motif, it is important to note that I did not take it from Star Wars, but I came up with it independently because I thought it was appropriate for the emotional charge that defines the relationship between the main characters.
Space. I decided quite early on that the novel would begin with this short sentence. At that time I didn’t have a computer with a word processor, so I started writing by hand. I wrote the prologue on a typewriter, but when I was done with that, I bought a notebook and a pencil and continued. I could have typed this, but I used a pencil to make it easier to correct, to erase, and of course to use less paper – and it was much quieter.
In the end, I ‘filled’ four notebooks – with lots of crossing out, correcting, erasing, adding, editing and replacing.
The basic story was more or less preconceived, at least the main points of reference, conflicts and twists and turns were roughly laid out, so – to use an animation analogy – I had so-called key points between which I had to insert phases.
One such key point was the fact that at the beginning of the novel Dorph and Dabra do not know each other, they only meet later, but there the two separate plot threads converge and continue as a third. A lot happens while one of them is getting to the other, which is how the character of Sirrah, who helps Dorph in one scene, and Treick, who has a relationship with Dabra, came into the picture.
Sirrah was a character with a more dubious background at the time; her hideout was under a pub (similar to the Tatooine cantina in Star Wars), but I tweaked this to make her less clichéd – and her past, which would later be revealed, would not have made sense for her to live in such a rough environment, so the pub became a shop, which of course still serves as a cover.
In the first Dabra scene, there was a bar called Sirius, which I also transformed; here I made an ‘Earthy’ reference: I changed Sirius to Old Florence (my mother’s idea) and it became a club instead of a bar.
The ‘virtual space battle’ scene that takes place here remains almost entirely in its original form. The shorter side scenes like this, which are not closely connected to the main storyline, but still move the plot forward or colour the characters and their relationships, sometimes came as I was writing, and I didn’t plan them in advance.
In the end, I wrote about 160 pages in four large notebooks, so with the typed pages and the inserts, I had about 180 pages of material. This became the basis for the finished novel, which I later had to transform into something more manageable, transparent and of course more beautiful and readable.
First I typed the manuscript, which resulted in a document that also ran to nearly 200 pages. Of course, this version also had further corrections and additions. Again, I needed a computer to do the final touches, but as I still didn’t have my own, I had to find another solution.
At that time I was attending the Foreign Language Training Centre in Rigó Street. It was 1999, the Internet boom was still in its infancy and I knew nothing about computers, but the FLTC administrator was very helpful. We scanned my typed pages and ran them through an OCR software, and the resulting Office document was now suitable for correcting errors, such as passages that the program could not identify.
Around this time I started thinking about buying my own computer so I could work at home. The first computer of my life ended up being an old IBM PC PS2-286 running Windows 3.1 – with a word processor.
Once it became possible to edit or even re-read Star Siblings at any time (and be pleased with myself for being so clever), I put it aside for a while, as I had other longer and shorter breaks, because I was living my life and doing other things. My computer finally broke down in 2002, so I bought a new, more modern configuration in 2004 and backed up the files stored on floppy disc.
From time to time, I took out the novel, read it over and over again, sometimes correcting it here and there, but often months or even years would pass without my having read it.
I once printed and bound the novel to make a birthday present for a friend. At the time, this was the final version, with all the scenes corrected, all the spelling mistakes corrected.
By then I had nearly 10 years of work on Star Siblings, but as I always hadsomething more important in my life, it slowly became a for-the-drawer novel.
If you ‘leave’ your novel alone, over time your previous reading experiences are ‘erased’ and you can come back to it with a clean slate. When I picked up Star Siblings again in 2013, I was immediately struck by the drafting errors and logical errors, although there were not too many of them, but I felt that several areas needed correcting.
Depending on the dramaturgy, I sometimes completely reworded a scene, making it more realistic and believable, and sometimes I pulled out something out of place, but there were also many scenes and dialogues that had stood the test of time since the autumn of 1997; they remained unchanged in the form in which I first put them on paper.
One of the most important changes was the reworking of the character of the so-called Armourers. In the original version, they were dumb mercenaries who, although very good fighters, were not very smart; Sirrah actually makes a fool of one of them. I felt that I was making them out to be comedians without justification, so I rewrote that part. I also changed the disguise above Sirrah’s hideout from a tavern to a shop, and added a new dialogue.
I have elaborated more on the first meeting between Dorph and Dabra, making these scenes longer and more nuanced. I also wrote additional scenes for the fractions that followed; he talks to Sirrah while she calls Treick.
I’ve made scenes that started out as clichés more human, so the characters have again been refined; Dabra, for example, has become more compassionate and direct, rather than a terse ‘robot’ who doesn’t care about anything but his gun.
Dabra was ‘re-dressed’ in the ‘virtual space battle’ scene, originally wearing a different outfit, but now in a more appropriate outfit for a date. I completely changed the ending of this scene; instead of the original, somewhat childish love scene, Treick goes up to Dabra and they have sex.
I’ve done a lot of tweaking to Sirrah’s long monologue when she tells about her past, and I’ve also incorporated it into a more elaborate scene.
I have refined Corab Bengez’s personality, getting to know his motivations better.
Erdan’s character has also been transformed; for example, we learn about him, why he joined Bengez’s men, and why he doesn’t like what he experiences.
After that, several years passed again, some fundamental changes in my life happened, which made Star Siblings recede into the background again, but I kept thinking that I wanted to do something with it, e.g. to publish it, or at least to publish it as an ebook; after all, you write not only for yourself, but also for your audience.
I did the ‘next last’ check (and a few more changes) in the summer of 2019, when I tried to make the love storylines and related scenes more sophisticated and realistic.
At the beginning of 2021, my friend Dávid and I talked a lot; he basically became my editor, because he gave me a lot of suggestions and ideas on where to go with Star Siblings. Based on my notes, I made some important changes; I rearranged
scenes, wrote new ones, maybe crossed something out, made stronger logical connections.
- Much information is revealed in the course of the plot, rather than through dialogue as before
- Internal monologues have been completely removed
- At least at the level of reference, details such as Dorph’s financial situation, where he gets the money to travel. Owning a spaceship is nothing special, it’s more like owning a car, so I’ve rewritten the relevant parts
- Dabra tells how she grew up and became a private detective, what the background was to her decision
- I’ve added a hug to the conversation in the park
- It turns out, what the most important drink of space travel is
- The invading alien race has been given a name and a culture, not just a reference to them somehow
- Treick and Yahmose have got some scenes together
- I’ve also written a new dialogue between Dabra and Kadack Fedyrno
- The most important change, however, is related to how the siblings’ mother lost her life, and how that affects the whole story
- I also completely changed the ending (the original ending can be found in the downloads)
After all this, I consider Star Siblings to be finished, which means that I feel ready to release it. For financial reasons, I do not plan to publish it in print, so I would like to make it available to readers as an ebook.
You can find interesting extras on the following pages:
- listen to some of the chapters I’ve read as an audiobook
- browse the image gallery
- if you have any comments or questions, you can send me a message
- and of course download the ebook!